Professional Athlete Quotes

With the responsibility of being a professional athlete, I believe that it is on us to go out there and help people.

I think sports for kids is the greatest thing in the world because it teaches you how to share, about winning and losing and pressure. But I don't think you should force your kid to become a professional athlete.

Several professional athletes have wrongly taught many young Americans by example that the only way to succeed in sports is to take steroids.

I'm a Mormon. I don't do a lot of the off-the-field activities that athletes are known to do. And I guess I've created a world that is unlike the typical world of a professional athlete.

We professional athletes are very lucky. Unlike most mortals, we are given the privilege of dying twice - once when we retire and again when death takes us.

I always wanted to be a professional athlete. I love my life.

Madonna is an athlete; she has to be treated like a professional athlete. She doesn't work out for six hours a day, though, like some of the press says. She never works out for more than two hours a day, and then only when she has the time.

We're professional athletes. People know who we are, and if there's some way we can help with a friend or someone in need, that's a responsibility we have. I really strongly believe that.

I get a lot of parents coming up to me, telling me they are grooming their kids to be professional athletes. I'm really against that. I think it's a great life, and yeah, you can lead them in that direction. I think a lot of parents live their lives through the kids. Because they didn't make it, they want their kids to make it. It puts a lot of undue pressure on the kids.

I personally believe that professional athletes should give back to their communities in any way possible. We are in a position to make a difference.

Dancing is still the hardest profession. Gene Kelly said dancing is a man's game Women have to do the same thing in heels, and have to sing and smile at the same time. Professional athletes don't even have to do that - and they get to wear sneakers.

As a professional athlete, I can tell you I feel every single emotion and not one of them ever helped me in a fist-fight before. And not one of them has ever hurt me in a fist-fight, either. The only thing that has helped me is my skills and the only thing that hurt me is my opponent's skills.

As a professional athlete I can tell you I feel every single emotion and not one of them ever helped me in a fist-fight before.

The United States has become a place where entertainers and professional athletes are mistaken for people of importance.

I've been a professional athlete, I've directed films, I've run a company with 150 employees, and nothing compares to writing a screenplay. Just the second I think I know what I'm doing, the rug gets pulled out and I have no idea what I'm doing. Because there are so many problems to solve.

There's far more that goes into being a professional athlete than being a college athlete. So many differences that people don't realize. It's not just about playing football and getting paid to do it. There's a lot of things that you have to deal with.

There is no correlation between a childhood success and a professional athlete.

Willpower is that thing CEOs and professional athletes tell us they used to make it to the top.

As a professional athlete and someone who has spent almost his entire life in boxing, not a day goes by when I don't think about coming back, but I am retired, and after speaking to my family and following a great deal of introspection, I have decided to stay retired.

I believe that I need to explore my opportunities to the maximum, in order to excel and continue to play the best football I can.

It was the baseball fantasy of a lifetime - to be able to sit on the bench with all those professional athletes. I got to take my son along because I wasn't sure I would be able to play with them.

Obviously, you're known for what you do. But you still want to be known as a good person. You're a person a lot longer before and after you're a professional athlete.

I just want you guys to see it also. To see what type of words that are said toward me, and towards us as professional athletes. Everybody thinks it is a bed of roses and it's not.

I was a professional athlete, the best baseball player in the world at one point.

Losing is the bane and bugbear of every professional athlete's existence, but in baseball the monster seems to hang closer than in other sports, its chilly claws and foul breath palpable around the neck hairs of the infielder bending for his crosshand scoop or the reliever slipping his first two fingers off-center on the ball seams before delivering his two-and-two cut fastball.

A good professional athlete must have the love of a little boy. And the good players feel the kind of love for the game that they did when they were Little Leaguers.

There are things about some professional athletes that I cannot stand-the pretense, the egos, the pomposity, the greed.

It wasn't an excuse. It was a fact. He'd had to make his way alone, and no one - not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses - ever makes it alone.

As a professional athlete a lot is going to be said about you - but I just try to move forward and try to achieve my goals.

I was an All-American in wrestling in high school, was National Champion in Chinese kickboxing in 1999 and have spent a lot of time around professional athletes, which includes my eight-plus years as CEO of a sports nutrition company.

So much of a professional athlete's success depends upon not necessarily the play itself but how he deals with... always saying how you deal with good, is just as important as how you deal with bad.

I most certainly believe that when you're an athlete, that really translates to all sports. You just understand it, your body understands it, and your mind understands it. And you just - it just clicks. I've found that happening when I play other sports. I've seen it, like when I've hit the ball with other professional athletes, and you can see they're just learning so quickly. It's just something that's in their blood. So I think it was in my parents' blood and they understood.

In 1997, when I started as a professional athlete, my sport was not like it is now. I needed to develop myself to beat the next generation, but things also changed in the sport. Bikes have changed, the sport has gotten faster, and it's becoming more professional. But my goal always was to try to be one step in front of all the others. That was my motivation. That helped me to work every day during the year, and very hard. And it never stopped.

Professional athletes die twice.

In many ways, I think the WNBA is changing the way America views women and is having a positive impact on the way America views professional athletes. We're showing the world what women can be as athletes and what athletes can be as citizens.

The lifespan of most professional athletes is relatively short, and most have no preparation for doing anything after their career ends, which it could in an instant.

We should try to teach the young people values that are useful to them whether they become professional athletes or not.

I don't believe professional athletes should be role models. I believe parents should be role models.

The doors fly open when you're a professional athlete.

When I was playing I never wished I was doing anything else. I think being a professional athlete is the finest thing a man can do.

You know raising a family in the lifestyle of a professional athlete can be very difficult.

Every professional athlete owes a debt of gratitude to the fans and management, and pays an installment every time he plays. He should never miss a payment.

America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.

Unlike boxers-or any professional athlete for that matter-rowers have little motivation to do it longer than necessary. With a modest amount of self-realization, you'll know when you have acquired the nebulous gifts that rowing has to offer, whether it's courage or a strengthened soul or a powerful body. Once you have it, drop back ten yards and punt. Someone new will pick up the ball and run with it.

Colin Kaepernick is the latest professional athlete to spark a national debate about the meaning behind the American flag and the national anthem.

Unfortunately the world is what it is now. People don't get along for whatever reason. As professional athletes, in a way we're almost ambassadors for peace, because sports brings everyone together.

The 10 or 12 artists I have known really well all my life are at least as competitive as professional athletes. They may express it in slightly different terms, but you look at the Jackson Pollocks et al., and they are as interested in wall space in the galleries as Joe Montana is in the percentage of completed passes. So the notion that symphonic conducting, or stage play, or pure art, is not a competitive business is real bullshit.

David Epstein, the author of the best book on athletics in recent memory - "The Sports Gene" - wrote to me to say that he thinks I'm being overly generous. He points out that, for years, there used to be an "all-star challenge" on television, in which the best professional athletes from a variety of sports competed in a kind of makeshift decathlon.

We can make a huge impact. We can be that difference maker just because of our status and because of what we do. I would advise all professional athletes to get involved and to try to help make a difference. If we don't, who else will?

There's three things that as a professional athlete you want. You want to get to the big leagues, and I accomplished that. Winning a World Series ring, I got that. And then getting to the Hall of Fame. That's everybody's dream. Every athlete, they want to be up there in the Hall of Fame, mentioned with the greatest players to ever play this game.